Aerocene Pacha: a solar balloon that soars above saltlands in Argentina
Published 8 February 2020 by Céliane Svoboda
Above the Salinas Grandes salt flat in the Argentinean province of Jujuy, a symbolic record was set for a new way of floating in the air: 100% solar-heat-powered human flight. Once again, it was a community of artists that assumed this admirable counterpoint to modern capitalism.
While the contemporary notion of record-setting is traditionally associated with excess, if not extremes, the Aerocene Pacha project invites us to reconsider our ideals for progress. Who hasn’t dreamed of flying and soaring through the air? If Western societies have often rushed to fulfill our dreams at the expense of the environment and less fortunate others, “Fly With Aerocene Pacha” heralded the dawn of a new era, where taking off is no longer a matter of fossil fuels. The Aerocene foundation’s aerosolar balloons manifest our human desire to fly around the world, beyond borders, without the use of gas, oil or lithium, relying exclusively on the heat of the sun.
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From January 22 to 28, Aerocene made several attempts to set records for human free flight in an aerosolar balloon. Leticia Marques was the pilot of these record-setting flights, doubling the records as a female pilot. It’s a rare performance that is so dependent on meteorological and thermodynamic conditions—as with hot air balloons, Aerocene solar balloons are subject to the whims of the winds, but they also require optimal exposure to the sun, as explained by flight supervisor Igor Miklousic of Balon Klub Zagreb.
So the best day for flying turned out to be the 25th: 2 kilometers and 550 meters, at an altitude of 272.1 meters, in 1 hour and 21 minutes. It may seem modest, but the Aerocene team takes every precaution when it comes to both the pilot and the balloon. More importantly, the data confirms the record of a new genre, where it’s less about racing against the clock than maintaining a form of equilibrium. While it may not be the very first free flight in an aerosolar balloon, it is the first time that a flight was registered by the World Air Sports Federation.
Watch the live flight on January 28, 2020 in Salinas Grandes, Argentina:
The initiative was accompanied by K-Pop group BTS’s Connect-BTS program. What’s surprising is that Connect-BTS also emerged from an international community of artists who seek to redefine the connections between various art fields, theories and practices and links to audiences. It’s a pleasure to see these blossoming art communities assume their philosophy while being politically engaged.
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As Argentinean artist Tomás Saraceno’s pet project, Aerocene also supported the four communities bordering the salt flat in Jujuy—Tres Pozos, Pozo Colorado and San Miguel del Colorado to the north, and the Inti Killa community of Tres Morros to the south, all threatened by the extraction of lithium—by displaying on the balloon itself: “No to Lithium, Yes to water and life in our territories.” Aerocene “Pacha” is also an homage to Pachamama, the Earth-Mother goddess in Andean cosmogony, yet another occasion to revisit our cultural mythologies.
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Floating in the air
Meanwhile, the vast international Aerocene community continues to expand and build on its several years of existence, as Makery has also followed its activities. Initiated by Tomás Saraceno’s studio, it includes artists, researchers, makers and citizens dedicated to working on new ways of seeing and doing. By challenging the destructive Capitalocene and promoting an Aerocene of air, the community seeks to reinvent our relationship to air and the climate through a new form of poetry, sublimated by aerosolar balloons.
Now, the concept of flying is closer to “floating” to the rhythm of solar and air flows. Aerocene invites us to pay attention to our ways of “walking”, to our ways of “operating”. The balloons seen at climate protests in Paris aim to be universal symbols for a desired Aerocene era to begin. “We believe that the human species must commit to the goal of ‘coming back down to Earth’ before the end of this new decade,” says Saraceno, echoing French philosopher Bruno Latour.
Tomás Saraceno, Aeroceno for Canal Encuentro (in Spanish):
Performance and care
Just as much an art performance as a record-setting sports performance, Aerocene’s “aerosolar performance” reminds us that the ecology revolution begins with a policy for care and attentiveness (to others, to the world, to all living things).
The project was supported by no less than 33 Argentinean native communities. The day before launch, a big ceremony reunited the various players of the Aerocene initiative. Collaboration with indigenous populations is at the heart of the project, as they are the first ones to suffer in the Capitalocene, even as they are the first to truly take care of our planet and protect biodiversity.
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“Indigenous nations across the planet account for less than 5 percent of the global population while protecting 80 percent of its biodiversity; it is their struggles that form the theory and praxis of fighting against the degradation and loss of life on this planet,” begins Aerocene’s mission statement. “Aerocene Pacha will carry in its cargo the hopes of humanity moving beyond the Capitalocene era. Lifted only by the sun, carried only by the winds, the free flight embodies an ethical commitment to the atmosphere and planet Earth, towards re-understanding how to ‘fly with our feet on the ground’.”